TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD PALMERSTON AT BRADFORD. TIIE incidents of Lord Palmerston's visit to Bradford illus- trate with curious accuracy the political position of the Premier. The day was kept as a general holiday, the towns- men received him with hearty cheering, his hosts presented him with an address full of delicate flattery, the dinner was attended by all the local notabilities, and the Premier seems to have felt that he was received with honours only less than those accorded to royalty. The weather was propitious, the guests were in fair good humour, the Premier himself never looked more perfectly the green old man all England still be- lieves him to be, everything inside and out went off amidst smiles and congratulations. A stranger watching the scene would have declared Lord Palmerston's popularity unim- paired, his power as evident as that of his greatest predeces- sors in office, his hold over the affections of the people dis- tinct and strong. Beneath all this smoothness, however, an under-current of discontent ran deep and strong, the concerted pieces of flattery were marred by a low growl of dissatisfac- tion,—the roar, as it were, of a crowd outside sounding under and through all these high notes of acclaim, and almost alarming the performers out of their parts. Before his arrival the working men of Bradford had resolved to take no part in the reception, to retire en masse as one section of them pro- posed, or to receive him in solemn silence as the majority agreed. The first idea was impracticable in the face of natural human curiosity ; the second could not be carried out, for the strangers drowned the natives, and their cheers made silence seem a useless self-restraint. The presence of the old man, too, who once held up so well the English banner when it seemed about to trail, exercised its usual influence, and of those who agreed to the resolution one-half at least broke through it when the moment arrived. The feeling which had produced it, how- ever, survived his departure as it had preceded his arrival, and the mass of the people of Bradford remained throughout all the ceremonial dissatisfied with the guest they seemed so cordially to receive. The hosts themselves felt fettered. They tried to be complimentary, tried hard, but all they could get out of their hearts was thankfulness that peace had been preserved—which was not Lord Palmerston's fault—and a congratulation upon the undoubted fact that his Lordship bore his years with unusual ease. This laudation of age, the in- variable mark of political weakness and want of courage, the sign that a nation is looking back on the past instead of forward to the future, is now universal in England, and the Bradford citizens put the usual formula into words of unusual fitness. But the speakers could not even after dinner quite fall in with the apparent mood of the hour. Mr. Wickham indeed was entirely pleased, for was not the welcome of Lord Palmerston full condonation of the steady support he had given to the Premier's policy ? but Mr. Forster warned his leader that the cheering did not prove that the unrepre- sented had forgotten their grudge, and Sir Francis Crossley with vitriolic point asked him to tell Mr. Gladstone that " his speech on Reform was not so great a mistake as he had thought." The occasion was not perhaps the most appro- priate for a lecture, however short or mildly worded, but that fact only strengthens its meaning. Mr. Forster and Sir F. Crossley are just the men to perceive the limits their situa- tion imposed, and the slight infraction made on those limits testifies to the strength of the discontent which on such an occasion must have vent, or make them feel as if they were guilty of political hypocrisy. The attitude of the town of Bradford is precisely that of all true Liberals throughout England. On the whole, they accept Lord Palmerston even with demonstrations of applause. He is the last of a great school of statesmen whom on points the nation likes better than the new school, of the men who have made of politics their sole profession, who lived through the great struggle between freedom and its most deadly enemy, the Cmsarism to which Democracy often tends, who have raised the name of England high, and who would still endure any sacrifice—except a quarrel with the Court— rather than that name should be besmirched. They feel, too, like all other men, the charm of the Premier's bearing, the pleasantness of seeing a statesman of eighty laugh down political antagonists and jest away serious remonstrance. They are amenable, over amenable, to the influence of that strong good sense, that total absence of prejudice or crotchetti- ness or doctrinaire fixity of ideas which we take to be Lord Palmerston's highest intellectual claim, and which while the nation has no purposes exactly suits its mood. Above all they recognize that he above all Other men of his political rank, perhaps alone among men so old, really understands Englishmen, really sympathizes with those vague wants and thoughts and desires which far more than principles impel great nations to movement. They are willing for all these things that he should be at the top, willing to give him cheers as it were in spite of themselves, willing to welcome and honour, and even, when that is possible, flatter the strong old Saddueee who tells his audience so frankly that the secret of living is not to care too much, that " anxiety is light to those who believe they are doing their duty to the best of their power." But they do not forget that they are Liberals, and that the man they are following is a Tory, who evades every Liberal demand, retards every Liberal project, jauntily laughs down every Liberal remonstrance, and the recollec- tion every now and then makes them a little bitter. The rank and file remember that during a reign which will in one more year be of unprecedented length, nothing has been done to admit them within the pale of the constitution, that pledge after pledge has been broken, that the driver has always stopped the locomotive whenever he could aver that the carriages were not pressing behind. The leaders remember how a Liberal Premier told Mr. Cobden not to go beyond his last, for though he might frame a commer- cial treaty polities were out of a mere manufacturer's sphere,. how he has filled his Cabinet time and again with dukes and clerks, how steadily he has maintained the claim of a class to monopolize administration. They bear with these things even when angry, just as the workmen of Bradford cheered after passing a vote of silence ; but the annoyance exists under all the outward approval, and they sign the address which condemns the favourite even when they give way to the remark that it would be inhospitable to present it. Lord Palmerston is always, and as Premier always has been, in the position he occupied at Bradford,—guarded, and fenced, and bucklered in by something which is not his own popularity. Either he is- necessary, or he is a guest, or lie is a bond of union among. other men, or he is the only compromise available, or he is too old for aught but respect to be decent, and so Liberals accept him with a reserve, a half silence from the mass, an irresistible tendency to lecture in the chiefs.
Lord Palmerston seems to have felt the cold current amidst all the balmy breezes, for as usual when he scents opposition he was gracious in the extreme. He does not often con- descend to pour out such mellifluous compliments, to identify himself so completely with manufacturing interests, to declare a day of local welcome the " brightest among the annals of his life." That it was all done with infinite tact is only to say it was done by Lord Palmerston, but it might not have been done so heartily had there been nothing to smooth away. Bradford is proud, egregiously proud of its brimming pros- perity, and the statements that their progress had only begun, that capacious as the halls of the Exchange might be a " larger, ampler, more capacious" building would still be needed, that they were "contributing immensely to the strength and wealth of that country of which they formed so distin- guished a portion," went straight home to the citizens' heart. Made by a lecturer they would have been laughed at as " bun- combe," made by a Premier they gave to the secret thought of every townsman a gratifying reality. If he had only added that Bradford had surpassed Leeds, he would, we verily be- lieve, have been forgiven everything on the spot, have marched home with a workman's guard of honour round him, for these Northern towns, to their honour be it spoken, are as full of rivalry as ever were Italian cities during the middle ages. The body of the speech was of the same kind, a defence of free trade, which Bradford—having sucked the marrow of the French treaty—loves, put with really admirable colloquial force. It would be difficult to find a better illustration of the homely sort than that in which Lord Palmerston described the feel- ing of a protected trade suddenly exposed to the risk of com- petition. "Every class which is protected puts on its night-cap and goes to sleep, and it requires that which the school-boys call cold pig, the application of competition, to stimulate the energies of the man, and make him bestir himself and improve the calling to which he has devoted his mind and capital." " Cold pig 1" that is exactly the sensation of the paper- makers of to-day. Nor would it be easy for the best orator in the House to analyze the cause of the Continental dread of British manufactures or the absurdity of reciprocity in two happier sentences than these :—" There is no greater cause of error in reasoning than the misapplication of terms,—they say, especially in Germany, if we let in English commodities upon a low duty and with difficulty we shall be inundated by British commodities. They think in their own mind what an inundation of water is, and that the same evil effects would arise from the admission of English commodities that would happen from the breaking of one of the great dykes. They totally forget that we are much too sensible to make them a present of what we have been making—that we only send our commodities abroad as an exchange for an equal value to be received here." Reciprocity, the removal of duties by England on condition that France would remove hers, 4' is very much as if two men had shackles on their legs, and one was to say to the other, Now, if you will take off your shackles I will take off mine, but not otherwise." It is perfect all that, only it is just a little odd to hear it all from Lord Palmerston, and see the reflected glory of free trade poured over him at Bradford, and remember that throughout the struggle he was the strenuous advocate of a fixed duty, that free trade owes him nothing except the sup- port of a project of impossible compromise suggested by another man. The speech was, like the reception, externally all brightness and pleasantness and geniality, but with a vein of artificiality, a trace as of a flaw suddenly concealed running through it all. There, as all over England, the Liberals are ready to crown Lord Palmerston with flowers, but in the chaplet the amaranth is the only one not needing to be improved by art.
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